A friend I went to high school with has become totally possessed by gender ideology and the effects are now seen in the "transitioning" of her 14 year old daughter. It's harrowing to watch the whole process like a slow motion train wreck. What's incredible is how intensely my friend seems to be promoting her daughter's transition; it's like she's thrown her whole being into it. (She's a very dominant type A character, the father is highly friendly but the kind of guy who is so passive, you have to check if he still has a pulse).
First I got an email about a year ago stating that the daughter was "identified female at birth" but now realizes she is boy, and therefore from here on out she will have a new boy name and we will all welcome her as the family's new son. My friend wrote that they do not regard this as a phase but rather as the daughter's ("son's") TRUE identity. (did I mention the girl is 14? Already finding her true identity?)
Charting the last year on Facebook, my friend is sure to mention in every post how proud she is of her son and her queer family (her other daughter, age 11, now goes by "they"). She post pics of her "son" (who looks like a bashful and sweet girl) and says stuff like, "this is who I'm fighting for", as she laments at all the hateful people in the world who would want to destroy their "queer joy" and rob her son of access to his life saving meds. I'm positive a mastectomy is on the way.
She's in a heterosexual marriage, but her social media is now filled with raving about the deep love of their "queer family" at parades, LGBTblahblah+ bake sales, flags flying everywhere, pride that her son is standing out (he joined the boys swim team), it all seems too much, like a crazy over-compensation. To be generous, I feel like my friend wants to support her daughter. My friend is also an incredibly partisan person who highly identifies with the liberal left. She seems like the ideal candidate to swallow this crazy gender ideology. Her social media reflects a sense that her family is incredibly special, on the right side of history, standing up against hateful oppression directly targeting them. I kind of suspect that as a (VERY) wealthy white liberal family who sees themselves as being so morally good, it's nice for them to be seen as even better in their circles now that they are also "oppressed".
To the author's point, girls who are non-gender conforming never had to face such high stakes until now. I can't express how gross it is to watch this sweet girl caught in the jaws of this sick ideology. To be clear, there is absolutely NOTHING I can say to my friend at this point. She has been completely ideologically captured --to question her would be an enemy attack, not just against the lives of LGBT(etc forever)+ but against all oppressed people everywhere in the world (per the logic of the greater postmodern intersectional framework that contains critical queer theory). So, I anticipate the mastectomy with dread, and pray for the power of the daughter's spirit to eventually sift through whatever deep family anxieties led the mother to enforce this mania and the father to remain a doormat.
This was me growing up in the 1990s (minus the lesbian part). Its been the running joke in my family that God forgot to give me a Y-chromosome (that can't actually be a joke anymore). I got told by my ballet teacher at 5 years old that 'I danced like a boy'. I also fought off an attempted sexual assault as a child, which, whilst not the worst possible outcome, left enough of a mark on my psyche to make me hate being a small blonde hair, blue eyed girl that looked like every female child victim of terrible crimes in the 1990s. Puberty was not much fun, as my genetic inheritance meant pretty wild mood swings plus the usual practicalities of a fertility cycle working out how to function. Socially, it was pretty terrible. I hated my first all-girls high school and did not fit in; academically gifted, perpetually bored, with a temperament that could not abide by doing something 'because everyone else was', and very 'non-girly' interests was not a good combination. I spent most of my early high school years hiding in the library reading fantasy novels about girls disguising themselves as boys to go and kick ass. Joan of Arc was (and still is) a favorite and I read everything I could about her. I was painfully jealous of the camaraderie fostered at my brother's all boys school and male friendships in general. Female social circles wider than 2 were exasperating and boring as I had very little patience for the subtle social games and maneuvering and passive aggression that typifies all female groupings.
Was I trans? By that DSM5 definition, I could have been. I'm glad the internet wasn't a thing yet and social media didn't make it's mark until I was finishing high school and getting out of that pressure cooker social environment. I'm also glad my parents let me be myself but affirmed my dignity and goodness as an emerging woman, that periods weren't a bad thing and female fertility was an awesome creative power. I hope I can take the same path with my two daughters, who knows what kind of bad-shit crazy they are going to have to deal with when they're time comes for high school. Give me old-fashioned rock and roll, binge drinking and smoking any day to this.
Let's face it, a lot of smart girls are so-called "gender nonconforming" simply because we have half a brain in our head and don't waste time with stupid (and sexist) fashion magazines.
I hear you. That said, I've spent enough time around high IQ people to know that wisdom/prudence and intelligence are two very different things and don't always correlate. Some of the 'smartest' people I've come across have been women at the Pub in a little town in the middle of nowhere, Australia who barely finished high school and yet are successful and happy across multiple domains and haven't had a spoon, let alone a silver one to help. Some of the 'dumbest' and insufferable people I know actually have ridiculously high IQs and are complete asses (no they're not on the spectrum either, so they don't have that excuse for being socially inept).
I am in my 60s and gay. Was an effeminate child and liked playing with girls.....but I also like train sets, reading, etc....but was effeminate and the world let me know it in many unkind ways.
As Wesley Yang and others have noted, the old style of gay conversion therapy tried to change the mind (the male mind likes women) to fit the body. The new version of gay conversion therapy, which is far more pernicious than the old way, aims to change the body, painfully and radically so, to fit the mind.
And note how this new style of conversion therapy is promulgated and protected by Biden administration, Governor of Illinois, and also, I believe by the gay governor of Colorado, Jared Polis.
Question: Does anyone know how therapists/psychologists attempt to differentiate between children who will be gay/lesbian and those who are trans?
Time. Basically you have to give kids time, and you have to sort out the other comorbidities in the mean time, and probably a hell of a lot less screen time. That is literally the only thing that will separate out the persistent gender dysphoria from the desistent. The EXACT opposite of the affirmative care model.
I was the classic tomboy growing up too - short hair (I think that was my mom's call), hated dresses, spent more time running around the neighborhood with the boys and was *always* high up in a tree! I finally grew out of the phase in high school, altho I still preferred hanging out with boys because they were more accepting and less catty/petty than high school girls. I have a granddaughter who is a tomboy and I'm thankful my son and DIL are letting her "just be a child" and nurturing her interests instead of insisting she's in the wrong body. Thank you for sharing your story.
This story has really emphasized a connection between the so called transgender diagnosis and what could be viewed as a form of gay conversion tactics. Thank you for sharing!
I was "gender nonconforming" too because I didn't want to wear those stupid frilly Prairie shirts that were big in 1980 (yeah, aging myself) - I wrote about this here -
It's not just lesbians, but any smart, intelligent girl who has better things to do with her time than primp in front of a mirror. As Bill Maher says, maybe we don't all want to be the Kardashians.
The short hair preference is really fascinating to me, as someone born in 1945. When did the "long hair = female" idea start? When I was a teenager and a young adult, there were many sort hair styles that didn't have anything to do with how we saw ourselves "gender"-wise". There was the DA in the late 50s, the pixie for several years, and lots of others. I noticed several years ago that women basketball players always had long hair in pony tails. Seemed like a rule, and their women coaches often wore stilettos. Maybe some kind of internalized homophobia?
That's a very keen observation. The 'long hair=feminine' has pretty old roots. In most Medieval European cultures, long hair was a symbol of feminine fertility. Unmarried women were to wear their hair long, out and uncovered. Married women pinned up their hair and covered it with veils and a variety of fashionable head coverings in public. Nuns and consecrated religious women cut their hair short under a veil (and still do) symbolically representing their spiritual marriage to Christ, and forgoing of sexual activity.
In the 1910s and 1920s especially, this changed a lot post WWI and the collective trauma suffered by European society and the advent of women taking on and claiming a larger economic role in the absence of men, because they died or maimed physically and psychologically. This is when short hair, became fashionable in addition to being a practical reality of women working in a variety of factories from munitions to canneries.
I had been taught that the possible origin of short hair was the Roman empire. Soldiers cut their hair so that it couldn’t be pulled in battle. It gave a practical edge.
That is somewhat true, but there weren't many women (or any that we have reliable record of) that were in the Roman army, There isn't much evidence of short hair being fashionable for women in the Roman Empire at any point - see the above point about long hair = fertility and femininity. Short hair, even shaved heads in males is pretty common across the ancient world and we even have flint evidence of hair cutting implements from the paleolithic era too. Aside from practical warfare applications, it also meant you kept cooler slaving away in the fields, or working in workshops and you got less lice and fleas too.
Only men volunteered or were conscripted to the Roman legions to my knowledge. Hence short hair’s association with manhood in Rome. This hair style would have been in sharp contrast to the barbarian tribes of Gallia, Germania, Britania, etc. These conquered people may have resented the Rome, but admired the culture and artifacts as high status. They adopted not just economic practices, but also culture. Hence, the far-reaching influence of something like the style of men with short hair.
This is very similar to my own experience. I was a girl with short hair, who dressed up in waistcoats and bowties, and who was primarily interested in sporty stuff. My parents were chilled about it and simply saw me as their child -- in the 80s and 90s there was no preoccupation with applying labels.
I grew up to be bisexual (and primarily same-sex-orientated in a romantic sense). Again, I was allowed to discover this by myself, no parental steering or judgment involved. When I was ready to talk openly about it in my early 20s, my parents were receptive and accepting.
This is how you support kids who are different or non-conforming when it comes to gender expression and/or sexuality. Parents can guide and support, but it is completely counterproductive to instruct or impose rigid definitions of identity.
This is a very important essay. I thoroughly agree with the fact that we are now in the grips of old-fashioned stereotypes masquerading as "liberating." There is a wide range of behaviors, appearances, attitudes, and preferences displayed by both males and females, and these can change both in the short- and long-run. That is the beauty of being human being; we are all unique, interesting, and dynamic. It is profoundly unfortunate that children are not simply accepted as they are and for what they are. As a Biological Psychologist, I'm appalled by the fact so many have become so narrowminded that they have reverted to these long-outmoded stereotypes of male and female behavior. Thankfully, human beings are much more diverse than the stereotypes allow. It would be quite boring otherwise. Thank you for this very good essay, Frederick EverythingIsBiology.substack.com
YES, let's stop pathologizing puberty and drugging, sterilizing, mutilating children and adolescents because they're non-conforming or non-binary. or because they have parents who are incompetent, narcissistic, ideologues, and/or mentally ill. it also seems curious how EVERY expression of a non-conforming, non-binary person, and the only targets of a transition, are expressed as--wait for it--one of only two binaries: man. woman. anyway, love and feed the little fuckers and let them grow up and express themselves however they want. and when they're 18 they can do whatever the hell they want.
If those preferences are parallel in human children and rhesus infants, then it likely surfaces in other member of the monkeys/ape family (remember that humans are apes).
But think of all the lives we'd save if we just give kids what they think they want, and absolve ourselves of personal responsibility when it turns out, they made a mistake. Oh no, it can't be a mistake, who wouldn't want to be trans~
Great post. I had so many weird issues with how I perceived myself as a teenager. In hindsight, it seems like I was consuming too much media, playing too few sports, didn't care about makeup or jewelry, and felt like I wasn't "feminine enough" but also "too feminine" when my mom didn't let me wear cute clothes because they emphasized the contours of my body too much. What cured me was observing women around me who had all different shapes of bodies than just who was on MTV, watching older women playing sports in earnest, and finding enjoyment in doing my nails. I had a lot of stereotypically masculine interests and thought I was a lesbian for a little while in college. But I was too scientific-minded to not question why lesbians had to dress butch and be masculine, like what did your sexual attraction have to do with how people dressed or behaved. I was friends with an older lesbian who tried convincing me that all my friends with short hair were secretly lesbian... but i knew that was not the case, and none of it made sense. I went to lesbian/bi support groups, and decided it was all too focused on complaining.
As an adult and parent to a little girl, it strikes me a lot of my confusions were because my mom didn't help me become comfortable with my femininity and express it in my own way and support me through it. Femininity is so restrictive it's easy to to feel like you're "not a real woman".
I think there's too many people with ideas that try to explain away the discomfort of being a young woman without trying to make womanhood easier on young women, while also using us for their pet cause.
Excellent piece! Funny enough, I loved having long hair, had mostly female friends, hated sports, and had other hobbies and interests that were more typical of my female peers. Turns out I'm XXY; unlike homosexuality, it can be tested for, but even when it is, I suspect kids are no less vulnerable to being "mistransed."
The penny drops HARD when you realize diagnostic criterion #1—recently defended by Genetically Modified Skeptic (!) as though it being mandatory makes the DSM 5 *more* restrictive than the DSM-IV (!!)—amounts to nothing more rigorous than the question: are you cis? "C'mon, doc: would mommy and I be here if I were cis? Now make with the blockers before I unalive myself!"
@colinwright OMG...I can identify with a lot of this as well. Question for you: what is the best way to teach kids, esp little kids about biology and evolutionary biology? Do you have books or shows you recommend? I want to teach my kid now before he faces the confusion that will come at him one way or another.
It is very sad how freedom of gender expression has become medicalized.
A friend I went to high school with has become totally possessed by gender ideology and the effects are now seen in the "transitioning" of her 14 year old daughter. It's harrowing to watch the whole process like a slow motion train wreck. What's incredible is how intensely my friend seems to be promoting her daughter's transition; it's like she's thrown her whole being into it. (She's a very dominant type A character, the father is highly friendly but the kind of guy who is so passive, you have to check if he still has a pulse).
First I got an email about a year ago stating that the daughter was "identified female at birth" but now realizes she is boy, and therefore from here on out she will have a new boy name and we will all welcome her as the family's new son. My friend wrote that they do not regard this as a phase but rather as the daughter's ("son's") TRUE identity. (did I mention the girl is 14? Already finding her true identity?)
Charting the last year on Facebook, my friend is sure to mention in every post how proud she is of her son and her queer family (her other daughter, age 11, now goes by "they"). She post pics of her "son" (who looks like a bashful and sweet girl) and says stuff like, "this is who I'm fighting for", as she laments at all the hateful people in the world who would want to destroy their "queer joy" and rob her son of access to his life saving meds. I'm positive a mastectomy is on the way.
She's in a heterosexual marriage, but her social media is now filled with raving about the deep love of their "queer family" at parades, LGBTblahblah+ bake sales, flags flying everywhere, pride that her son is standing out (he joined the boys swim team), it all seems too much, like a crazy over-compensation. To be generous, I feel like my friend wants to support her daughter. My friend is also an incredibly partisan person who highly identifies with the liberal left. She seems like the ideal candidate to swallow this crazy gender ideology. Her social media reflects a sense that her family is incredibly special, on the right side of history, standing up against hateful oppression directly targeting them. I kind of suspect that as a (VERY) wealthy white liberal family who sees themselves as being so morally good, it's nice for them to be seen as even better in their circles now that they are also "oppressed".
To the author's point, girls who are non-gender conforming never had to face such high stakes until now. I can't express how gross it is to watch this sweet girl caught in the jaws of this sick ideology. To be clear, there is absolutely NOTHING I can say to my friend at this point. She has been completely ideologically captured --to question her would be an enemy attack, not just against the lives of LGBT(etc forever)+ but against all oppressed people everywhere in the world (per the logic of the greater postmodern intersectional framework that contains critical queer theory). So, I anticipate the mastectomy with dread, and pray for the power of the daughter's spirit to eventually sift through whatever deep family anxieties led the mother to enforce this mania and the father to remain a doormat.
This was me growing up in the 1990s (minus the lesbian part). Its been the running joke in my family that God forgot to give me a Y-chromosome (that can't actually be a joke anymore). I got told by my ballet teacher at 5 years old that 'I danced like a boy'. I also fought off an attempted sexual assault as a child, which, whilst not the worst possible outcome, left enough of a mark on my psyche to make me hate being a small blonde hair, blue eyed girl that looked like every female child victim of terrible crimes in the 1990s. Puberty was not much fun, as my genetic inheritance meant pretty wild mood swings plus the usual practicalities of a fertility cycle working out how to function. Socially, it was pretty terrible. I hated my first all-girls high school and did not fit in; academically gifted, perpetually bored, with a temperament that could not abide by doing something 'because everyone else was', and very 'non-girly' interests was not a good combination. I spent most of my early high school years hiding in the library reading fantasy novels about girls disguising themselves as boys to go and kick ass. Joan of Arc was (and still is) a favorite and I read everything I could about her. I was painfully jealous of the camaraderie fostered at my brother's all boys school and male friendships in general. Female social circles wider than 2 were exasperating and boring as I had very little patience for the subtle social games and maneuvering and passive aggression that typifies all female groupings.
Was I trans? By that DSM5 definition, I could have been. I'm glad the internet wasn't a thing yet and social media didn't make it's mark until I was finishing high school and getting out of that pressure cooker social environment. I'm also glad my parents let me be myself but affirmed my dignity and goodness as an emerging woman, that periods weren't a bad thing and female fertility was an awesome creative power. I hope I can take the same path with my two daughters, who knows what kind of bad-shit crazy they are going to have to deal with when they're time comes for high school. Give me old-fashioned rock and roll, binge drinking and smoking any day to this.
Let's face it, a lot of smart girls are so-called "gender nonconforming" simply because we have half a brain in our head and don't waste time with stupid (and sexist) fashion magazines.
I hear you. That said, I've spent enough time around high IQ people to know that wisdom/prudence and intelligence are two very different things and don't always correlate. Some of the 'smartest' people I've come across have been women at the Pub in a little town in the middle of nowhere, Australia who barely finished high school and yet are successful and happy across multiple domains and haven't had a spoon, let alone a silver one to help. Some of the 'dumbest' and insufferable people I know actually have ridiculously high IQs and are complete asses (no they're not on the spectrum either, so they don't have that excuse for being socially inept).
I am in my 60s and gay. Was an effeminate child and liked playing with girls.....but I also like train sets, reading, etc....but was effeminate and the world let me know it in many unkind ways.
As Wesley Yang and others have noted, the old style of gay conversion therapy tried to change the mind (the male mind likes women) to fit the body. The new version of gay conversion therapy, which is far more pernicious than the old way, aims to change the body, painfully and radically so, to fit the mind.
And note how this new style of conversion therapy is promulgated and protected by Biden administration, Governor of Illinois, and also, I believe by the gay governor of Colorado, Jared Polis.
Question: Does anyone know how therapists/psychologists attempt to differentiate between children who will be gay/lesbian and those who are trans?
Time. Basically you have to give kids time, and you have to sort out the other comorbidities in the mean time, and probably a hell of a lot less screen time. That is literally the only thing that will separate out the persistent gender dysphoria from the desistent. The EXACT opposite of the affirmative care model.
I was the classic tomboy growing up too - short hair (I think that was my mom's call), hated dresses, spent more time running around the neighborhood with the boys and was *always* high up in a tree! I finally grew out of the phase in high school, altho I still preferred hanging out with boys because they were more accepting and less catty/petty than high school girls. I have a granddaughter who is a tomboy and I'm thankful my son and DIL are letting her "just be a child" and nurturing her interests instead of insisting she's in the wrong body. Thank you for sharing your story.
This story has really emphasized a connection between the so called transgender diagnosis and what could be viewed as a form of gay conversion tactics. Thank you for sharing!
I was "gender nonconforming" too because I didn't want to wear those stupid frilly Prairie shirts that were big in 1980 (yeah, aging myself) - I wrote about this here -
Dear Disney: Conservatives Aren't the Only Ones Concerned About the Medicalization of Gender Nonconforming Children: https://wholistic.substack.com/p/dear-disney-conservatives-arent-the
It's not just lesbians, but any smart, intelligent girl who has better things to do with her time than primp in front of a mirror. As Bill Maher says, maybe we don't all want to be the Kardashians.
The short hair preference is really fascinating to me, as someone born in 1945. When did the "long hair = female" idea start? When I was a teenager and a young adult, there were many sort hair styles that didn't have anything to do with how we saw ourselves "gender"-wise". There was the DA in the late 50s, the pixie for several years, and lots of others. I noticed several years ago that women basketball players always had long hair in pony tails. Seemed like a rule, and their women coaches often wore stilettos. Maybe some kind of internalized homophobia?
That's a very keen observation. The 'long hair=feminine' has pretty old roots. In most Medieval European cultures, long hair was a symbol of feminine fertility. Unmarried women were to wear their hair long, out and uncovered. Married women pinned up their hair and covered it with veils and a variety of fashionable head coverings in public. Nuns and consecrated religious women cut their hair short under a veil (and still do) symbolically representing their spiritual marriage to Christ, and forgoing of sexual activity.
In the 1910s and 1920s especially, this changed a lot post WWI and the collective trauma suffered by European society and the advent of women taking on and claiming a larger economic role in the absence of men, because they died or maimed physically and psychologically. This is when short hair, became fashionable in addition to being a practical reality of women working in a variety of factories from munitions to canneries.
I had been taught that the possible origin of short hair was the Roman empire. Soldiers cut their hair so that it couldn’t be pulled in battle. It gave a practical edge.
That is somewhat true, but there weren't many women (or any that we have reliable record of) that were in the Roman army, There isn't much evidence of short hair being fashionable for women in the Roman Empire at any point - see the above point about long hair = fertility and femininity. Short hair, even shaved heads in males is pretty common across the ancient world and we even have flint evidence of hair cutting implements from the paleolithic era too. Aside from practical warfare applications, it also meant you kept cooler slaving away in the fields, or working in workshops and you got less lice and fleas too.
Only men volunteered or were conscripted to the Roman legions to my knowledge. Hence short hair’s association with manhood in Rome. This hair style would have been in sharp contrast to the barbarian tribes of Gallia, Germania, Britania, etc. These conquered people may have resented the Rome, but admired the culture and artifacts as high status. They adopted not just economic practices, but also culture. Hence, the far-reaching influence of something like the style of men with short hair.
This is very similar to my own experience. I was a girl with short hair, who dressed up in waistcoats and bowties, and who was primarily interested in sporty stuff. My parents were chilled about it and simply saw me as their child -- in the 80s and 90s there was no preoccupation with applying labels.
I grew up to be bisexual (and primarily same-sex-orientated in a romantic sense). Again, I was allowed to discover this by myself, no parental steering or judgment involved. When I was ready to talk openly about it in my early 20s, my parents were receptive and accepting.
This is how you support kids who are different or non-conforming when it comes to gender expression and/or sexuality. Parents can guide and support, but it is completely counterproductive to instruct or impose rigid definitions of identity.
This is a very important essay. I thoroughly agree with the fact that we are now in the grips of old-fashioned stereotypes masquerading as "liberating." There is a wide range of behaviors, appearances, attitudes, and preferences displayed by both males and females, and these can change both in the short- and long-run. That is the beauty of being human being; we are all unique, interesting, and dynamic. It is profoundly unfortunate that children are not simply accepted as they are and for what they are. As a Biological Psychologist, I'm appalled by the fact so many have become so narrowminded that they have reverted to these long-outmoded stereotypes of male and female behavior. Thankfully, human beings are much more diverse than the stereotypes allow. It would be quite boring otherwise. Thank you for this very good essay, Frederick EverythingIsBiology.substack.com
YES, let's stop pathologizing puberty and drugging, sterilizing, mutilating children and adolescents because they're non-conforming or non-binary. or because they have parents who are incompetent, narcissistic, ideologues, and/or mentally ill. it also seems curious how EVERY expression of a non-conforming, non-binary person, and the only targets of a transition, are expressed as--wait for it--one of only two binaries: man. woman. anyway, love and feed the little fuckers and let them grow up and express themselves however they want. and when they're 18 they can do whatever the hell they want.
Greeting all, Have not had a chance to read this but just saw it.....
"Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08000949
If those preferences are parallel in human children and rhesus infants, then it likely surfaces in other member of the monkeys/ape family (remember that humans are apes).
But think of all the lives we'd save if we just give kids what they think they want, and absolve ourselves of personal responsibility when it turns out, they made a mistake. Oh no, it can't be a mistake, who wouldn't want to be trans~
Great post. I had so many weird issues with how I perceived myself as a teenager. In hindsight, it seems like I was consuming too much media, playing too few sports, didn't care about makeup or jewelry, and felt like I wasn't "feminine enough" but also "too feminine" when my mom didn't let me wear cute clothes because they emphasized the contours of my body too much. What cured me was observing women around me who had all different shapes of bodies than just who was on MTV, watching older women playing sports in earnest, and finding enjoyment in doing my nails. I had a lot of stereotypically masculine interests and thought I was a lesbian for a little while in college. But I was too scientific-minded to not question why lesbians had to dress butch and be masculine, like what did your sexual attraction have to do with how people dressed or behaved. I was friends with an older lesbian who tried convincing me that all my friends with short hair were secretly lesbian... but i knew that was not the case, and none of it made sense. I went to lesbian/bi support groups, and decided it was all too focused on complaining.
As an adult and parent to a little girl, it strikes me a lot of my confusions were because my mom didn't help me become comfortable with my femininity and express it in my own way and support me through it. Femininity is so restrictive it's easy to to feel like you're "not a real woman".
I think there's too many people with ideas that try to explain away the discomfort of being a young woman without trying to make womanhood easier on young women, while also using us for their pet cause.
Excellent piece! Funny enough, I loved having long hair, had mostly female friends, hated sports, and had other hobbies and interests that were more typical of my female peers. Turns out I'm XXY; unlike homosexuality, it can be tested for, but even when it is, I suspect kids are no less vulnerable to being "mistransed."
The penny drops HARD when you realize diagnostic criterion #1—recently defended by Genetically Modified Skeptic (!) as though it being mandatory makes the DSM 5 *more* restrictive than the DSM-IV (!!)—amounts to nothing more rigorous than the question: are you cis? "C'mon, doc: would mommy and I be here if I were cis? Now make with the blockers before I unalive myself!"
@colinwright OMG...I can identify with a lot of this as well. Question for you: what is the best way to teach kids, esp little kids about biology and evolutionary biology? Do you have books or shows you recommend? I want to teach my kid now before he faces the confusion that will come at him one way or another.